The Westing Game

Saturday, March 7, 2009
It's that time again dear readers, it's SUGGESTION SATURDAY.
Today's book was suggested by Belvia, who I accidentally skipped over last week, so thanks for your patience Belvia.

Today's book; "Sixteen people were invited to the reading of the very stranger will of the very rich Samuel W. Westing. They could become millionaires, depending on how they played the game. The not-quite perfect heirs were paired, and each pair was given $10,000 and a set of clues (no two sets of clues were alike). All they had to do was find the answer, but the answer to what? The Westing game was tricky and dangerous, but the heirs played on, through blizzards and burglaries and bombs bursting in air."

I'm feeling much better today, so that made reading/blogging easier - but the weather was bad today. There was thunder, lightening and heavy rain going on while I was reading this - which left me worrying that the electricity would go out and make it impossible to get this blog entry. On the upside, the weather did lend the perfect ambiance to the reading of a mystery novel.

Shallow thoughts about today's book:



  • The whole time I was reading this book I kept thinking about one of my favorite episodes of The Golden Girls, The Case of the Libertine Bell, where they participate in a murder mystery weekend. I think I may turn today into a murder mystery theme day and go watch the episode when I'm done writing this entry. - On a side note: I'm a bit disturbed that so often I read something and it reminds me of something I watched on TV. In fact, I can come up with a TV anecdote to go along with just about anything that happens to me (and I believe my sister can back me up on that one in the comments section).

  • I found myself looking forward to the introduction of new characters because so many of them had such odd last names; Windkoppel, Barfspringer, Theodorakis. I'm weirdly fascinated by really bad/odd names, whether they be first or last names, to the point where when I run across someone who gave their child a really bad name I end up hoping they'll have another child soon just so I can see if they can top that name the next time around - which is a really shallow reason for hoping someone will have a kid, but I'm a shallow person so it works.

  • I think that watching too many soap operas (where the murder mysteries are so obviously that everyone knows who did it six months before it's revealed) has completely dulled my brain, because I didn't even have the slightest suspicion as to how the book was going to end. Not even so much as a guess. But then maybe TV isn't totally to blame - I was never good at playing Clue as a child - I was more of a Monopoly girl. The only part of Clue I excelled at was making up funny voices to go along with the characters and acting melodramatic and saying things like, "Thank you, you've been exceedingly helpful," after someone shows me their card. I really got into the characters - and thank goodness my sister was sitting there getting into character as well, because no one else in the family would ever play along. They were never amused by our attempts to bring a little drama to the game.